Chiller (Arcade) review

"Firstly, let me ask you something:
"

Firstly, let me ask you something:

Why do we play videogames?

Is it because you enjoy playing them? Do they help you escape from your normally stressful life or do they calm you down when youíre pissed about something? Or maybe you play them because you enjoy inflicting pain on virtual figures to make you feel like a man?

Chances are that most of you picked the first three answers and left the last one out. However, if you picked the last answer then I might have found your perfect game for you.

Chilller is a rather old light gun game that hit the arcades almost twenty years ago. Considering its contents, itís a miracle that the game didnít stir up as much controversy as should have because itís graphic horror was certainly more violent and sadistic than Mortal Kombat. In MK, youíd have a one on one fight with an opponent and violently kill him in the end. Heck, if you didnít do it then he wouldnít think twice about doing the same to you. So, killing your opponent wasnít actually morally bankrupt but in Chiller, your mission is to torture innocent people who are already having a pretty bad time of it.

You start off in a rather macabre torture chamber. The floor is stained with blood, body parts are scattered across the ground and three unhappy (and naked) individuals await their fate. Youíll notice that you can blow away the skin of your new friends by shooting them and each hole you blast removes a point on the Monster Meter. One man is chained to the wall; a knife is implanted in one leg and is other leg has been chopped off. Shooting him all over will give you handful of points and leave a bloody skeleton hanging from the wall. A woman lies in an Iron Maiden, unable to defend herself from the bat that is biting at her neck. You can blow her to bits as well and wince in disgust at her inability to die. Even with no skin left, these people refuse to die. Finally, other sour face has his head stuck in a vice. You know what you have to do. Shooting the vice will lower it further and further until his head is turned into paste and you get another few points of the meter.

After this, youíll enter another chamber with some people strapped to racks and another tied up over a river. Shooting the racks will take these guys apart and shooting the guy over the river will lower him into the water, where a crocodile instantly devours him. Then, you go on outside and shoot a naked woman that is either buried into the ground or has had her legs sawn off. Severed heads are impaled on fence posts waiting to be blasted, along with a host of scuttling hands. Take your pick at what you want to trash first but make sure you hit the ghosts that fly around the background, they need to get whatís coming to them. Finally, youíll come across a rather bland corridor and watch in horror as woman flees from a demonic ghost and watch as she falls to through the trapdoor. Youíll then be confronted by a troop of ghosts and monsters that walk from one side of the corridor to another. Make sure you pop as many as can until your Monster Meter drops to zero.

Hitting key items during each of the stages will allow you to participate in a bonus game that can win you a free try. To play the game, you have to find eight hidden targets on each level. Every time you shoot one of these targets, small firework goes off to indicate itís successful destruction. If all eight are destroyed in the time limit, you will be allowed to take part in a rather bland fruit machine game, which is as biased as a Nazi doctor. Then we have another fast paced game that throws numerous items like hearts and heads at you at BREAKNECK SPEED!! If you miss one, then you lose. Itís a major letdown, considering that you worked so hard to shoot all of the key targets.

As you can imagine, Chiller gets very repetitive after youíve finished it once. The hidden items remain in the same place throughout so you instantly become a master of the game when youíve found them all. Despite its moral deficiency and lack of replay, Chiller is a rather original title and boasts quite a bit of creative ingenuity. Itís easily one of the most violent games created and was perhaps the first title to ever have such gratuitous gore and not spark a major ruckus. Unfortunately, these arenít enough to compensate for four short stages with a rather repetitive front. Chiller may be remembered for being the first violent light gun game but it wonít be remembered for being a good one.

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